December 15, 2005

I'm really rather excited about the big finale show tonight. Predictions? Preferences?

UPDATE: (Spoiler!) Wow! I can't believe Randal demanded to be the only one when Trump put the question to him whether to hire a second apprentice and include Rebecca! The glory fell apart in an instant as he declined to be magnanimous and to recognize Rebecca, a 23-year-old woman of steel. Randal, you won and then you threw it all away!

IN THE COMMENTS: Lots of comments. Very little support for Randal.

MORE: I recap the last three minutes of the show in another post, here.

76 comments:

With the way things are going, the (literally) 9 people for whom I left messages several hours ago will all call back during the show (and due to the context, I can't not answer), and one of the dogs will puke again. And my son will need a drink of water. And ... well, whatever.

Sigh.

At least I know you will post about it (and then there's the CNBC reruns--though given the season and my upcoming schedule, I'm not optimistic that I'll catch one.)

A public service you perform, re: apprentice, yes indeedy.

I won't make a prediction, because, given the day, I'm sure I'll be wrong. And who needs that?

I just mentioned on my blog that I thought these were the best qualified candidates since the first Apprentice. A double hire is an interesting idea. Now that freeman mentioned it, there is a possibility that DT would do it. But I don't think it will happen. But I've been wrong before. A fact that my wife will remind me of a lot.

I have to say that Rebecca really dropped the ball. Yahoo isn't a charity! This was a charity event! She forgot the Elizabeth Glaser folks in trying to please the sponsor. I have to say that Randall did a much better job balancing the needs of both the sponsor and the charity.

I should flesh that out a bit. Rebecca has potential and gives good Boardroom, but she's proven herself to be good at details while missing the big picture, and that's not good for an executive (or "executive" as the case may be). She blew the final task! She forced a yooge corporation to make a large donation on TV in order to salvage their reputation because she completely overlooked the focus of the task she was given.

Randal earned this one on his own, and should reap the rewards. Rebecca would make a good employee of the Trump organization, but not as the Apprentice.

tiggeril, you;re mssing the point. Randal would lose nothing by having rebecca be hired as another Apprentice. Trump's organization is large enough that two execs making $250,000 per year will each run their own show.

He lost a lot of goodwill. Trump is not an idiot and clearly asked Randal the question because he wanted to test Randal. Trump is like a good litigator: he always knows what he wants to hear from someone to whom he asks a question.

Randal's response to Trump's question says a lot about who he is as a person. I don't think Trump looked too favorably on his response.

Another point bears mentioning. Trump spent several minutes going on about how the choice he makes for the apprentice is important to him personally, as it reflects on his company. Randal should have picked up on that and the praise Trump was heaping upon Rebecca and endorse her.

"Mr. Trump, you said earlier how important it is that you hire good people. In consideration of that laudable comment, I would recommend that you hire Rebecca as well. She is as deserving as I."

Ditto about squandering good will. I liked Randall all right up to now, but that all changed with this ultimately selfish decision. I also feel he was nasty about Rebecca when he didn't need to be to win, while she was as respectful of him as she could be while still advocating for herself. I hope hope hope that Trump hires Rebecca tomorrow.

I agree with Dave. I think Randal's response caught Trump off guard (Trump hates the live part of the show).

Randal did not come off as a "nice guy" tonight which Trump touted as one of Randal's greatest strengths. I think just like Yahoo had to scramble to save face; Trump will be forced to save face because Randal failed this part of the task.

I wish we could have heard George's comments he wanted to make on the "records".

I hate the way this ended because Randal should never have been put in that position.

This was a woman who really never won a task as PM, didn't get one red cent in donations for her final charity project, and had stayed in the game mostly because Trump seemed to love her spunk in the boardroom.

I really don't blame him for not wanting to share the title with her. He already got a taste of what it would have been like when Trump pulled him away from enjoying the congratulations of his teammates to make him come sit down and talk about Rebecca some more.

It was a serious mistake on Trump's part. Want to hire both? Hire both! Now Randal's victory is going to be tainted with this bullshit "controversy" that never needed to exist in the first place.

tiggeril, you;re mssing the point. Randal would lose nothing by having rebecca be hired as another Apprentice. Trump's organization is large enough that two execs making $250,000 per year will each run their own show.

With all due respect, my point wasn't about him having to portion out the job like the last piece of birthday cake. My point was that she didn't earn it. If she'd done even a little better on the final task, I'd sympathize with the viewpoint that he should have said yes, but she didn't, and so I don't. She's a great competitor and she doesn't need Trump to go far, but in this case, her performance just wasn't up to par and there was no need, in my mind, for Randal to reward her for that.

Tiggeril: my point is that the question of whether Rebecca earned it is irrelevant. Trump was telegraphing pretty obviously that he thought both Randal and Rebecca were superior candidates.

Randal should have picked up on that and been magnaninmous. Trump's a smart man. He holds his cards close to his chest in order to see how people react. Randal failed to be aware of that. That speaks volumes about the kind of person Randal is.

In my mind, a competitive job interview isn't the place to be magnanimous, even if it is on television. I'm reserving my ire for Trump on this one, because I think it was a dick move to even put Randal and Rebecca in that position.

That said, I find it hard to believe that I am in the minority here in thinking that Randall did exactly the right thing not only for himself but also for the show.

Off the top of my head I think Randall said something to the effect that: "There is only one Apprentice. You don't call the show the Apprenti {he's more educated than I am, but I am unaware of that being the appropriate plural form}. So if I think for tonight, only one should be hired."

I think Randall was just being a strong individual, taking responsibility for his place in the world and focusing on that.

I also think this is best for the show. We watch for winners and losers. Would we tolerate a "tie" in Survivor? in the Amazing race? Plus, add in that it will increase ratings for shows where Randall, Trump or Rebecca appear to process the decision, it was best for the show.

If Trump wants to hire her tomorrow, go for it. (If he really wanted to stick it to Randall, he could hire her at more than what he has agreed to pay Randall.)

I thought I saw the double hire coming several weeks ago and Randal had nothing to lose by leaving it up to Trump. Not a good move. Kinda deflated the show, of course I never like these last episodes anyway.

Randal thought that Trump wanted him to accept Rebecca as another apprentice. Randal should have turned the tables on the offer and said, "I absolutely want Rebecca as my #2 for this task. We work great together, she's eminently qualified, and with her working with me on my project, it will come together better than ever conceived." It allows Randal to be magnanimous without ceding the spotlight as sole apprentice, gives Rebecca an executive position in the Trump Organization with opportunity for advancement, and satisfies Trump's desire to hire both. Win-win-win. Randal's choice was his prerogative, but he could have enhanced his own success.

Ruth Anne: "Apprenti" is a running joke over at "Television Without Pity." My theory is that his sense that "there can only be one" was a mental distortion caused by looking for too many years at the weird spelling of his own name, with that solo "L."

I'd also like to say that I got tired of hearing all the uncritical praise for his having 5 degrees. I think there's something questionable about that, a real negative that demands an explanations: why did you just keep hanging around in school getting one degree after another? Why didn't you want to go out in the world and start doing something? Have you really used all your degrees in whatever it is you've done since you finally saw fit to stop accumulating them?

And another thing: what was his million dollar "consulting" business? I couldn't understand what he did. It all sounded like double talk. And he had the nerve to insult Rebecca for being a journalist! He actually does things while she only writes about them. What the heck did he do though? And how can he be such a doer when he stayed in school getting 5 degrees? No one ever called him on that. He was some kind of motivational speaker? But he never made much more sense than Markus when he spoke. Everyone was always overly nice to him.

And then when it came time for him to do something nice, he completely refused. Ugh!

To pluralize apprentice as apprenti is just so wrong. Folks we speak English not Latin. Although this word is from Latin, it comes through the lens of Old French, Old English and Middle English. Let us celebrate our own language as the plural is apprentices.

I laughed out loud on reading that (not at you, Ann, but the sentences themselves.) Then I got myself right over to Randal's company site, just to see if my instincts were correct.

Yes, indeed!

Ann, welcome to the wonderful world of change management/IT consulting/etc. And the way that vast swathes of corporate America speak and write.

(Pssssst! You're not SUPPOSED to understand it .... You don't have the secret password.

And, really, you don't want to.)

Let's just suffice it to say that, of all the editing/writing work I have done, it's in these specific areas where the allusion "the emperor has no clothes" has popped into my mind with alarming frequency.

Sure can be lucrative, though ...

(Funny that the editing I enjoy most is that which pays least, and vice versa. Murphy's law, and all that.)

I don't watch the show... frankly I can't stand "reality televion" in general... But it is a competition isn't it?

And more to the point, the "job" is largely ceremonial. Do a search for "Kendra Todd" for some edja-cation.

A 2x hire would have made the drawn-out finale more of a letdown, I think. Randal blew his goodwill, as if it gets him anything in his new ceremonial position, but if the whole competition comes down to the final 2 getting "hired" anyway, can I have those 2 hours of my life back?

(Actually through the magic of TiVo and a delayed start, it wasn't as much of an ordeal than if we didn't have it.)

I got the impression Trump tipped his hand about wanting to hire both when he said that their choosing different projects made it easier for him.

I wondered after the show whether Randal might have been afraid Trump would call him on it if he recommended hiring Rebecca, saying "Two minutes ago, you didn't think she was qualified to work for me. What's changed?" Either answer he gave would raise questions about his loyalty.

That said, I think he could have recommended hiring her while preserving himself as "the" apprentice, if it was so important to him to be the only one. Trump didn't ask Randal whether Rebecca should also be an "apprentice," nor whether she should also win the competition, but whether they should hire her. It was clear that Trump thought Rebecca was an excellent candidate.

If you have an excellent candidate who wants to work for your organization, isn't it just about criminal to shrug them off on the basis of pride?

Annoying... watched every darn episode, then forget to tape final episode cause I am at work doing data entry on Christmas mail.

Randal sounds like he pissed off a bunch of people here, who all univerally hate him now because he did not opt to give Rebecca a leg up (despite the fact that she won nearly nothing). I agree it would have been nice of him though. He should have.

Maybe Randal, in not being "nice", was getting back at her for dissing him in that previous boardroom? It's so hard to be nice when people disrespect you, or hang up on you, or don't offer you enough money, or don't explain their business plan to you, and stuff like that.

But yea, Randal, for some reason, should just be nice, in case the subplot of his new job involves a stint as Mr.Rogers.

I do wonder, though, how well Randal will ultimately fit in with the Trump organization, because Trump seems much more direct than that. I suspect that he's not much for that kind of corporatespeak b.s., which may partly explain his affinity with Rebecca. Interesting that she's a journalist: As someone who has, and does, work in both areas, I can tell you that the mindsets, and even skill sets, are significantly different, as well as the worldview, generally speaking.

(I'm sort of weird in that I can incorporate and practice both; that's actually unusual. Not bragging, it's just a flat-out fact. Like the way some people can speak multiple languages fluently.)

Trump himself seems to me to have a style that in many ways is far more akin to the "J" mindset than the stereotypic "C" one, which Randal appears to be coming from, all his degrees notwithstanding, at least in terms of business. (Our impression of him is of course pretty superficial; still, I do find it interesting that he doesn't really exhibit all that much of an "A" mindset, at least in practice.)

I was a Randal-man the entire season, but that was entirely lame of him.

Does anyone else question the "multi-million" dollar nature of Randal's business? The business offices were a joke (what was that plastic banner behind him in the conference room?), though maybe I'm just comparing it to the law offices I spend most of my time in.

And not to be entirely shallow, but did his house look like a millionaire's house? Or his car?

I'm not saying he wasn't being truthfull. Maybe he gives it all to charity (which I would have been much more willing to believe if he had shown any charity tonight).

Randal doesn't know the plural of apprentice, and apparently Rebecca doesn't know the definition of the term.

Def. apprentice: A beginner, a learner.

Five degrees? Sounds like Randal has had enough learning for one lifetime. Something that was touted as a major plus for Randal (his education) should have been Rebecca's main point of attack.

What does Randal have to learn from DT? Did he learn anything during the entire show? He said the most difficult part was when his grandmother died. Yes, that's tragic, but it just hammers home the point that the challenges and tasks were a walk in the park for this guy.

If the point of this show is to find a worthy student for the Donald, it failed miserably this season.

As far as shadycharacter's comments and questions about Randal's business are concerned, just because he's a partner in a business with gross revenues in the millions doesn't mean that he's a millionaire. It just means he's one of the owners of a rather successful small business. Of all the business owners on the show, I believe that Alla is probably the most successful as a business owner.

While I could look at Alla's business history and see why she might be interested in working for Trump (she's looking to learn or try the next thing), when I look at Randal's history, I have to wonder if the desire to work for Trump isn't simply another instance of credentialing, something he seems obsessed with (which goes back to Ann's point about his 5 degrees not being a plus).

And with that in mind, his lack of magnanimity is even more of a turn-off. He had nothing to lose by saying he'd hire Rebecca, no matter what Trump decided to do.

And so, if Trump doesn't hire her, I do sort of wish, as Ann suggested, that Martha Stewart would hire Rebecca, simply because she seems so much more appealing than either of the finalists on that show.

Interesting theory about Rnadal wanting the job to add to his credentials.

If you look at his company's website (www.bctpartners.com) he is listed as President and CEO. According to his little video bio last night he is in charge of business develpment for his company. So, while he is off playing Apprentice who is going to be looking after his business? he made it sound like the place would fall apart without him.

Rebecca, a woman of steel? I do not agree. While I agree that she is a strong individual, I would not go so far as to describe her as a woman of steel. I thought the whole bit about her perservering in spite of her ankle injury was TOTALLY exaggerated; particularly, when Trump said something to the effect of she stayed with it when most others would have gone crying home--spare me!

As far as alleged lack of magnanimity is concerned, I also disagree. Being THE Apprentice surely comes with endorsement opportunities that would be diminished (even if marginally) by being a joint or co-apprentice.

Rebecca, woman of steel? Rofl! I couldn't believe it when Trump said that anybody who broke their ankle would quit the show and go home... WHAT??!?!?!

Then Rebecca says Randal's fatal flaw is he misses the big picture because he concentrates on the details... when she is the one who let the Yahooers scare her into not getting a friggin' dime for charity.

Rebecca's self confidence would be great if it bore any relation to reality. I prefer Alla's version.

I just can't believe the sentiments that I'm hearing. The notion that Randall who was consistently the best throughout the competition whould have to share his crown is ridicolous. Rebecca, admittedly, was looking out for herself throughout the competition, even using Randall's mistake on a posterboard, to say that she had lost respect for him. And now, he is supposed to champion her for the position that he rightlfully deserves. I guarantee that Rebecca would have given the same answer, and to expect any other of the past winners to differently would go against the nature of a competition.

I find it awfully convenient, that everyone is so willing to have Randall share his spotlight, when I didn't see near the same reaction to Kwame getting beat from Bill. Makes me wonder.

Wasn't that a strange bit about Yahoo not wanting their clients to be "hit-up" at the charity event? It sounds to me like someone in Trump's org arranged for Yahoo to sponsor the event but failed to tell them it was for charity. Otherwise, Trump would have been all over Rebecca instead of basically giving her a pass for failing the assignment so miserably.

Everyone keeps referring to Randal's consistent level of excellence throughout--but really what did he do??? Very few of the episode edits gave you any really idea of what the "excellent" players did because all the focus was on showing what the sub-par players did. I frankly think Randal got by on his pleasing personality and impressive resume. (I agree with Ann, what's the point of 5 degrees? It's overkill.) Sure, Randal was on some winning teams-- but the men's team was far and away superior to the women's team. I know that might be controversial to say but, seriously, how was Rebecca supposed to win with that bunch of clique-oriented women? They were the worst examples of women in business, petty, manipulative, two-faced and exclusionary. They couldn't make decisions without bickering and they were unable to unite behind any leader because they couldn't stop picking at their teammates. Even Randal couldn't even save that bunch from losing! When Rebecca was finally paired with higher quality teammates, her skills assisted in victory.

Also-think about the negotiations for the teams. Rebecca rocked! Randal was caught completely off-guard by her go for the throat style--he seemed to think he shouldn't have to negotiate with her and then, petulantly, when she won the coin toss and some of her choices he tried to steal her uncontested choice, presumeably out of ire.

In the final task, Rebecca did the superior job and I blame Yahoo for limiting her ability to fundraise. Seems like they thought they were just throwing a corporate party rather than sponsoring a charitable event. The customer is the guy paying the bills and that was Yahoo. If Yahoo had felt they did nothing wrong, then why come on and make a huge donation during the live show. They realized they had egg on their face. I don't imagine the Yahoo execs who kept reminding Rebecca not to ask for $ for the charity are in the doghouse right now.

Finally, I agree with the comments about the "multi-millionaire" company and Randal's lifestyle being at odds. His front door opened into his kitchen. That doesn't suggest high quality digs to me.

Rebecca DID do a superior job of getting money for the charity- except that she didn't get any money for the charity because she was not TOUGH ENOUGH. And she was a better contestant throughout the show, except for the fact that she was 1-2 as a leader while Randal was 3-0.

But as a non-leader she WAS better. Well, except every time a team could dump somebody they dumped Rebecca, and every time they could pull somebody from another team they pulled Randal.

"They were the worst examples of women in business, petty, manipulative, two-faced and exclusionary." You mean like Toral, the person Rebecca thinks is great? The person she refused to fire when she deserved it, and then rehired?

Rebecca should not even have been in the final two. She coasted in by being on Randal's team.